ChatGPT is a conversational AI that can answer questions in
writing. It is free. It can produce essays, plays, and songs. It can answer
complex questions. It will also let you know when there is a question that it
cannot answer. It is not full proof. It can make mistakes. It can produce
essays that would pass as a students work.
I can see the pros and cons of ChatGPT. As a teaching tool
it has endless possibilities. In my role, I would use ChatGPT to create essays
for various events in history and then have student’s fact check the essays.
They would effectively reverse engineer its creation verifying the contents and
including a complete citation page. This would be a great way for students to
learn or revisit the research process.
My concern comes from those students who will use it
thinking it is a shortcut to complete assignments. I think this is a real
possibility. It is also scary that programs that currently check for plagiarism
cannot always detect a ChatGPT creation. Kids could potentially take credit for
work that is not their own.
I think the best way to move forward is to let kids know we
are aware of this product and that we want to explore its possibilities
together.
